Week Four

This week was interesting to see someone's work while she was there with us. It was nice to hear the artist's point of view for once. It was also interesting to hear what others had to say about Althea's work in discussion. One guy in class said that he saw her film in a gallery and thought she was being sarcastic in it, and then was uninterested to find out she was serious about it. I didn't see any of her work in galleries but I was kind of surprised about how serious she was about her work. I don't mean to cut her down, its just that her films were a little hard to take serious. I do give her credit though, for the fact that she majored in photography I believe? and now she is making films. It's taking me a while to learn how to do quality film pieces and I'm a film major myself. I thought her films kind of felt like she had come up with all these great ideas that she kept jotting down and then just decided to jam them all together in one piece. I found it amusing how Althea said she got so much feedback on her pieces that were unintentional in her work. For example, how she said she got comments of maybe the girl had an eating disorder in the first film we watched. I would have never thought of the ideas she had told us about, but once we heard it, it all made complete sense. I thought her piece "A Memory Lasts Forever" was really awkward and uncomfortable. It bothered me from the beginning how the girl was stumbling around all fake pretending she was drunk and one girl was even puking, and then once they found the dead dog- they were instantly sober; singing songs and panicking and all. I thought the song was a little korney too. It felt like a disney movie, like someone mentioned in class. I felt that "Songstress" was entertaining at first, but quickly got boring. I felt myself wanting to see the next clip only to see what she looked like and how she sounded. It seemed like the girls were trying a little too hard. The only one I really enjoyed was the girl with the braids and the orange skirt. I think she sounded a lot like Jewel and she looked like Alanis Moirsette. By the time we saw the last girl, I was just not interested in the whole thing. In the last film(I can't remember the name), I found this one the most interesting. I think it seemed like it had a lot more thought and planning behind it. I couldn't figure out quite what she wanted us to get out of it as a viewer, but it kept my interest. It kind of made me feel like there was some kind of message behind it but I just couldn't grasp what she was saying. It was cool to see the end stare at the end though from all the characters. It was also great how she used the camera on a track the whole time and just filmed without stopping the camera or without even pausing in one spot.